Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz, thrust into national prominence just 28 days ago after a Republican runoff victory over an establishment opponent, took advantage of a primetime Republican National Convention time slot on Tuesday to extol the American Dream and to warn that Barack Obama’s policies were extinguishing dreams of freedom in America.

Cruz, the son of a political refugee from Cuba and an Irish Italian mother, paid homage to many of the themes that made him a national darling of the Tea Party movement and propelled him past heavily favored David Dewhurst in the Republican race to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison.

“We are seeing a Great Awakening,” he told fellow Republicans gathered in Tampa, “a national movement of We the People, fueled by what unites us, a love of liberty, a belief in the unlimited potential of free men and women.”

Cruz, who will become the first Hispanic senator in Texas history if he defeats Democrat Paul Sadler in November, described his family’s rise from political exile and hard-scrabble roots as “a love story.
It’s the story of all of us, a love story of freedom.”

In a speech that evoked Ronald Reagan’s challenge at the Berlin Wall, Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech and the defiant Texians at Gonzales who dared Gen. Santa Ana to “come and get it,” Cruz implored Americans to escape “crushing debt and a diminished future” by declaring: “We want our country back.”

“Republicans, Democrats, independents — we will not follow the path of Greece,” he said. “We will not go quietly into the night.

The villain in Cruz’s love story was President Barack Obama, who the Houston Republican accused of “trying to divide America.”

“It’s tragic,” he said, “how far we’ve come from hope and change.”

Texas delegates waved their cowboy hats and other Republicans rose to their feet as Cruz continued to skewer the president during his 10-minute speech. Pacing back and forth across the stage like a motivational speaker, Cruz used the skills he honed as a Princeton University debating champion to connect with an audience that was hungry for his message of freedom and smaller government.

Texas state Rep. Aaron Pena Jr., said Cruz embodies “the American dream and the immigrant’s dream.”

“His strength is in the fact that he’s animated the Republican base,” said Pena, a former Democrat who now chairs the Texas Legislature’s Hispanic Republican Conference. “The fact that he’s Hispanic is a plus.”

Cruz often spoke of his immigrant roots while running in the primary. His father, Rafael, was born in Cuba, and fled in 1957 to the United States.

But Gilberto Hinojosa of Brownsville, the new chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, dismissed Cruz’s discussion of his Latino heritage as a matter of political convenience.

“This is a guy who didn’t claim he was Hispanic any time before he won the primary,” Hinojosa said, adding that Cruz was born in Canada (although it is not a requirement to be born in the United States to run for U.S. Senate).

Speaking to the delegates, Cruz skewered the “hope and change” rhetoric that helped propel Obama into the White House in 2008.

“Can we restore the Constitution? Yes we can,” he said.

“Can we retake the Senate? Can we repeal ObamaCare? And can we defeat President Barack Obama?”

“Yes, we can,” delegates roared, many rising to their feet.

Smiling, Cruz ended with one last sarcastic echo of a famous Obama campaign slogan.

“Stand together with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and restore the American love story,” Cruz said. “That, my friends, is change we can believe in.”

Cruz’s speech came during an hour Tuesday evening that featured five minority speakers. Among them was Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, who talked about rising from a cafeteria worker to become a federal judge and then governor.

“This is America,” he said.

Jennifer A. Dlouhy of the Hearst Newspapers Washington Bureau also contributed to this report.